Thursday’s theme in Rio was the head-to-head competition among some of America’s biggest stars in marquee events.
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To bring back the Z-Scores, which accounts for performance against the entire field, not just the runner up and something introduced here comparing Biles to the best male gymnast Kohei Uchimura, Biles’s Olympic all-around win had a Z-Score of 2.805, the highest of the 22 individual all-around results from the past eight World Championships and three Olympics. Manual tied with Canada’s Penny Oleksiak to set a new Olympic Record. Add another handful of medals four years from now in Tokyo and she will be in rarified territory.
Her favourite gymnastics event is floor. Russia’s Aliya Mustafina took bronze with a total of 58.665 points.
Children wore Team Simone t-shirts and waved “We Love You Simone” signs, as they sat on the mats at World Championship Centre and watched the competition on a giant projector screen. But under the tiebreaker system, Mustafina got the bronze and Raisman lost out. Speaking of gold, the USA continues to rack up plenty of medals, with 38 total after Day Six on Thursday.
Sublime superstar Biles put on an all-time classic show in capturing the women’s individual all-around gymnastics event.
Two days after securing double gold in the pool in the 200m butterfly and 4×200 freestyle, the American lined up against his great rival and compatriot Ryan Lochte in the 200m individual medley.
But Phelps left the everyone in his wake, winning by a huge margin in 1:54:66, nearly two seconds ahead of silver medalist Kosuke Hagino of Japan.
With more likely to come.
And Karolyi, who will retire after many years coaching the US’ top gymnasts after Rio, predicted great things for her young prodigy. Ledecky swims in 800-meter freestyle and Phelps in the 100-meter fly. That race for gold goes down Friday night.
She scored 15.933 and became the first female in 20 years to “win back-to-back world and Olympic all around titles”, CNN reported.
The 2016 Olympics are in full swing in Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, where Team USA has won more gold medals than any other country thus far.
The effervescent Harrison faced France’s Audrey Tcheumeo in the final, which was close until Harrison took Tcheumeo down with an ippon that ended the match in the final minute.
Left unsaid was that she does it better than anyone ever has before.
Biles shrugged off the talk, just as she shrugged off a question afterward about whether she was a celebrity (she says she’s not). “I met her a year ago, and we became great friends”.
She credits her current coach, Jimmy Pedro, with helping her emotionally and as a judoka. And it’s not over yet, she has the chance to win three more medals at Rio. The game was all but over by halftime as Fiji raced to a 29-0 lead in this fast-paced, high-scoring version of the game. But the pair share more than just a name. Biles earned the first one on Tuesday while serving as the exclamation point to retiring national team coordinator Martha Karolyi’s going away party.
With numerous top names in golf opting out of Rio, citing Zika and security concerns, the field has been left wide open for lesser-known players like Fraser, who took a three-stroke lead at the end of the opening round.
“I would put Simone now on top”, she added.
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Shes struck gold twice in the last week So yes, Simone is already an Olympic heroine, first leading team US to victory in the womens team event, then smashing the all-round finals last night to be crowned the best cross-discipline solo gymnast, owning the bars, floor, vault and beam. Those really stand out for me.
